How common are fake job opportunities?
Very. The FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Report counts 24,688 employment scam complaints and $362,934,762 lost, up from 20,044 complaints in 2024. The FTC reported that losses to job and employment agency scams grew from $90 million in 2020 to $501 million in 2024, in its 2024 fraud data. In the BBB’s 2025 Scam Tracker Risk Report, employment scams ranked as the second riskiest type.
Signs of a fake job posting or fake job email
The FTC’s page on job scams gives the two clearest rules: if someone asks you to pay to get a job, that is a scam, and so is a job that has you deposit a check and use part of the money. Its alert on random job texts adds the third.
- You pay first. Training, a starter kit, equipment, a background check or a “visa fee” paid by you.
- The check-and-send-back job. You receive a check for equipment and must forward part of it before it bounces.
- The unsolicited text or WhatsApp. A recruiter you never contacted offers flexible remote work with high daily pay.
- The interview by chat only. No video call, no phone call with a real person, an offer within hours.
- The email domain does not match. The recruiter writes from a free mailbox or from a domain that is not the company’s website.
- Documents too early. A passport scan, your bank login or your Social Security number requested before any signed contract.
- Task work that needs deposits: rate products, see a balance, deposit crypto to unlock it.
Fake job applications and task scams
Some fake job applications are not for a job at all: the “application form” collects identity documents and bank details. Others lead to task scams, which the FTC tracked in its data spotlight “Paying to get paid”: reported job scam losses passed $220 million in the first half of 2024, with about 20,000 task-scam reports in six months.
Apply through the company’s own careers page or a job board you reached yourself, and send identity documents only after a signed offer from an email address on the company’s domain.
Job boards: is FlexJobs legit, and who is the employer?
A job board is not the employer. FlexJobs, for example, sells a subscription to its job listings (its pricing page says a subscription is required to see its hand-screened listings); the jobs themselves are with the companies that post them. A message from a “FlexJobs recruiter”, or from any job board, offering you a job directly is worth checking at the source: go to the board’s site yourself and to the employer’s own careers page.
Whatever the board, the employer is what you verify: does the company exist, is it active, does the recruiter’s email domain belong to it?
How to check the company and the recruiter’s phone number
- 01Paste the company’s website into the Business Check. If you only have the recruiter’s email, use the part after the @.
- 02Add the company name and country from the offer, and the phone numbers that called or texted you (up to three).
- 03Read the registry check: is the company active, and does it match the site? A namesake with no link to the site is shown as a possible match only.
- 04Read the phone check: whether each number is valid, which country it belongs to and its line type (mobile, landline, VoIP), with abuse reports when our phone data provider has them. A VoIP number for a firm that claims to be a large employer is worth a question.
- 05Call the company on the number from its official website and ask whether the job and the recruiter are real.
Business Check · Free preview
Check the company behind a job offer: registry, people, domain age, reputation and the phone numbers that contacted you.
Any free account can run a Business Check (3 credits, out of 10 free credits a month) and see how many checks ran and how many warning signs came up. The full report, with the score, the company, the people and every source, is on the Business plan ($49 a month), with a manual review by our team within 48 hours when the AI cannot confirm everything.
A recruiter’s long message can also go through the AI text detector. An AI-written message is not a scam sign on its own; it matters when the company behind it cannot be confirmed. A voice message from a “hiring manager” can go through the AI voice detector.
Frequently asked questions
How can I tell if a job offer is fake?
Look at the money and the identity. A fake offer asks you to pay, to deposit a check and send money back, or to fund tasks; and the company behind it cannot be confirmed, or its name is borrowed from a real company with a different website or email domain.
Is a job offer by text message a scam?
Usually. The FTC’s alert on random job texts says a text offering you a job out of the blue is probably a scam. Reply to nothing in the message; look up the company yourself and contact it through its official website.
Is FlexJobs legit?
FlexJobs is an established subscription job board. It is not the employer: the jobs belong to the companies that post them. Be wary of anyone claiming to recruit for you on behalf of a job board; check the board and the employer on their own sites.
Can AnyFact check a recruiter’s phone number?
Within a Business Check, yes: add up to three numbers that contacted you. We check validity, country and line type, with abuse reports when our phone data provider has them. We do not offer a phone-only lookup.
I already sent documents to a fake recruiter. What now?
In the US, report it to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov and, if your Social Security number was shared, use IdentityTheft.gov. Tell your bank if you shared account details, and watch for new accounts opened in your name.